NowhereMon:Altria is tied up in this too? Why the fark do tobacco and oil companies have to be so freaking evil.

When a company's existence is based around selling something that is demonstrably destructive to those who use it the choice that the company has is to continue to sell the product as if nothing is wrong (tobacco and oil companies), continue to sell the product with the caveat that the product is inherently dangerous when used improperly (guns and alcohol), stop selling the product completely (most drug companies).

Two of these options are ethical and moral decisions, one is not. Can you guess which one?

Heartland also continues to collect money from Philip Morris parent company Altria as well as from the tobacco giant Reynolds American, while maintaining ongoing advocacy against policies related to smoking and health.

WTF. Are these guys trying to be comic book super viliians or something?

"We failed to convince people that cigarettes were healthy... Maybe we can convince them climate change is not happening?"

As I'm sure will be pointed out many times in this thread, the Heartland Institute is full of the same people who were being paid to 'prove' that cigarettes don't cause cancer. They have a long history of taking money to try and undermine science.

In this case, the players have changed slightly, but the overall situation is strikingly similar. They're taking money to try and discredit the overwhelming scientific consensus about climate change, by manufacturing fake controversies and trying to lend credibility to long debunked, boneheadedly obvious assertions.

NowhereMon:Altria is tied up in this too? Why the fark do tobacco and oil companies have to be so freaking evil.

Cigarette companies invented the methods to manufacture controversy. Naturally they'd be kept as consultants by climate change denialists. And anything which tars genuine science will benefit those who make money by hurting people.

Seems like the GOP is shopping around a few different issues to see what will work against fartbongo, they've got Iran, climate change, gas prices, and social issues to work with, unless the economy shiats out again then you can replace the gas prices with the economy.

Goryus:As I'm sure will be pointed out many times in this thread, the Heartland Institute is full of the same people who were being paid to 'prove' that cigarettes don't cause cancer. They have a long history of taking money to try and undermine science.

In this case, the players have changed slightly, but the overall situation is strikingly similar. They're taking money to try and discredit the overwhelming scientific consensus about climate change, by manufacturing fake controversies and trying to lend credibility to long debunked, boneheadedly obvious assertions.

And the alarmists are being paid by socialist organizations for their campaign as well. Stalemate. How about some objectivity? How about admitting that suppressing argument is anti-science?

bloatboyIt's not so much that he lied to get some documents, but rather that the most damning one is a Complete fabrication.

Perhaps. I for one don't care about this "document leak" very much. The leak isn't at all necessary to know that the Heartland Institute is funded by and consists of anti-science right wing shills defending the interests of the biggest polluters by pushing lies and misinformation to create the impression in the media that there's some big controversy about the existence and threat of anthropogenic global warming.

The evidence is overwhelmingly against them. They don't care. There's big money at stake and if their supporters have to keep raping the earth to get it, that's fine with them. These shiatbags have all the credibility of tobacco company "scientists" from decades ago.

Code_Archeologist:NowhereMon: Altria is tied up in this too? Why the fark do tobacco and oil companies have to be so freaking evil.

When a company's existence is based around selling something that is demonstrably destructive to those who use it the choice that the company has is to continue to sell the product as if nothing is wrong (tobacco and oil companies), continue to sell the product with the caveat that the product is inherently dangerous when used improperly (guns and alcohol), stop selling the product completely (most drug companies).

Two of these options are ethical and moral decisions, one is not. Can you guess which one?

If oil is demonstrably destructive, then so is electricity, all things that run on electricity (including fark), backyard bbqs, most methods of cooking food, natural gas, any form of heat, etc.

browser_snake:Goryus: As I'm sure will be pointed out many times in this thread, the Heartland Institute is full of the same people who were being paid to 'prove' that cigarettes don't cause cancer. They have a long history of taking money to try and undermine science.

In this case, the players have changed slightly, but the overall situation is strikingly similar. They're taking money to try and discredit the overwhelming scientific consensus about climate change, by manufacturing fake controversies and trying to lend credibility to long debunked, boneheadedly obvious assertions.

And the alarmists are being paid by socialist organizations for their campaign as well. Stalemate. How about some objectivity? How about admitting that suppressing argument is anti-science?

Goryus:As I'm sure will be pointed out many times in this thread, the Heartland Institute is full of the same people who were being paid to 'prove' that cigarettes don't cause cancer. They have a long history of taking money to try and undermine science.

In this case, the players have changed slightly, but the overall situation is strikingly similar. They're taking money to try and discredit the overwhelming scientific consensus about climate change, by manufacturing fake controversies and trying to lend credibility to long debunked, boneheadedly obvious assertions.

But they told me the flavors were good for my "T zone," and 2 out of 3 doctors preferred menthol!

TofuTheAlmighty:Turnabout is fair play, assholes. At least this guy's on the side of angels instead of Exxon.

The fact that you accept one sides information meant to confuse but ignore the other sides information meant to confuse is perplexing.

Climate alarmists wont readily tell you climate shifts have been going on for centuries and seem to easily blame all of fossil fuel use as the reason. Yet at one time most of the areas around the pyramids were sitting near lakes and had to invent ways to deal with the flood season every year. Climate shift happened and now most of the area is now a desert, strange how that is glossed over.

Climates shift, it doesn't mean we can control it 100%, to say we can is just arrogant. How about we just work on controlling pollution and installing rational rules on making air cleaner rather than forcing rules that could cripple business.

browser_snake:Goryus: As I'm sure will be pointed out many times in this thread, the Heartland Institute is full of the same people who were being paid to 'prove' that cigarettes don't cause cancer. They have a long history of taking money to try and undermine science.

In this case, the players have changed slightly, but the overall situation is strikingly similar. They're taking money to try and discredit the overwhelming scientific consensus about climate change, by manufacturing fake controversies and trying to lend credibility to long debunked, boneheadedly obvious assertions.

And the alarmists are being paid by socialist organizations for their campaign as well. Stalemate. How about some objectivity? How about admitting that suppressing argument is anti-science?

Government grants to fund peer reviewed research are not the same as taking money to make shiat up.

browser_snake:Goryus: As I'm sure will be pointed out many times in this thread, the Heartland Institute is full of the same people who were being paid to 'prove' that cigarettes don't cause cancer. They have a long history of taking money to try and undermine science.

In this case, the players have changed slightly, but the overall situation is strikingly similar. They're taking money to try and discredit the overwhelming scientific consensus about climate change, by manufacturing fake controversies and trying to lend credibility to long debunked, boneheadedly obvious assertions.

And the alarmists are being paid by socialist organizations for their campaign as well. Stalemate. How about some objectivity? How about admitting that suppressing argument is anti-science?

In science when you have an opposing viewpoint, you must present credible evidence.

Bullseyed:Code_Archeologist: NowhereMon: Altria is tied up in this too? Why the fark do tobacco and oil companies have to be so freaking evil.

When a company's existence is based around selling something that is demonstrably destructive to those who use it the choice that the company has is to continue to sell the product as if nothing is wrong (tobacco and oil companies), continue to sell the product with the caveat that the product is inherently dangerous when used improperly (guns and alcohol), stop selling the product completely (most drug companies).

Two of these options are ethical and moral decisions, one is not. Can you guess which one?

If oil is demonstrably destructive, then so is electricity, all things that run on electricity (including fark), backyard bbqs, most methods of cooking food, natural gas, any form of heat, etc.

traylor:bloatboy: It's not so much that he lied to get some documents, but rather that the most damning one is a Complete fabrication.

Yeah, but this is Climate Science. Here we don't care whether the only evidence that supports our AGW claims is "complete fabrication".

Did you even read his link before jumping on his bandwagon? The author's entire "proof" that the document is a fake amounts to this:

"I used a pdfinfo script to analyse the memos. The info I got is that all the meta data dates changed on the day of the leak in the Pacific time zone (-8 GMT)."

If someone had converted the doc from some other format like word to a PDF, or even just opened the doc and hit the save button, the date modified would have been changed. Calling this absolute proof of a forgery is laughable at best.

Might the document be a forgery? Sure, anything is possible. However to claim that is has been proved a forgery is not in any way true.

Just had one of these Heartland Foundation whores do a deliberately obfuscating write-up of a climate change paper I recently wrote. The worst part was finding out through this leak that he makes 6 times what I make (as he was listed by name) to twist the science to his masters' ends.

Goryus:As I'm sure will be pointed out many times in this thread, the Heartland Institute is full of the same people who were being paid to 'prove' that cigarettes don't cause cancer. They have a long history of taking money to try and undermine science.

In this case, the players have changed slightly, but the overall situation is strikingly similar. They're taking money to try and discredit the overwhelming scientific consensus about climate change, by manufacturing fake controversies and trying to lend credibility to long debunked, boneheadedly obvious assertions.

And by overwhelming scientific consensus, you mean some government boards of non-scientists (the IPCC), movie stars (like Tom Cruise) and liberal politicians.

There are actually more scientists to be found on the web sites with anti-CC petitions than there are on the governmental panels whining about clouds.

It's the two page memo he made up that's the the problem. Climate change isn't worse than stated just because of the financing of denier organizations. Politicians like Gore and scientists like Gleick are the biggest stumbling blocks for policies that affect climate. The current leaders advocating climate change have too much of a political agenda that doesn't involve science.